Microsoft Brings Back the Work & Play Bundle for a Limited Time

Heads-up, Microsoft fans: Microsoft is once again offering a chance to buy the Work & Play Bundle, which provides a year of Office 365 Home, Xbox Live Gold, Xbox Music Pass, and Skype Wi-Fi + Skype Unlimited World at a drastically reduced cost. The gotchas? It’s only available in the US, and only for a limited time, so you need to act fast.

Microsoft first offered this bundle last fall, but you had to go into a retail store. Now it’s available online. “We saw a great response to the bundle from customers last year, and are pleased to bring it back – this time online,” a Microsoft representative told me.

Office 365 Home. As I just wrote about in Which Office 365?, this is the version with usage rights for five users in a household, each of which gets five installs of Office for PC/Mac, five installs of Office for large tablets, Office for smart phones, and much more. It costs $99.99 per year normally.

Xbox Live Gold. Normally $59.99 per year.

Xbox Music Pass. This all-you-can eat streaming music service normally costs $99.99 per year.

Skype Wi-Fi + Skype Unlimited World. With this, you get Wi-Fi access at over two million hotspots around the world, plus unlimited minutes to call friends and family around the globe from your laptop, tablet, phone, or TV. The normal cost is $13.99 per month, or $167.88 per year.

Add that all up and you can see that the constituent parts would cost over $425 when purchased separately. So Work & Play is basically a $275 savings. It’s a no-brainer if you’re already using some or all of these services.